BACK TO SCHOOL: Families gear up, fill kids' backpacks

Patrick Dove/Standard-Times Students and parents arrive at Lake View High School to register for the coming school year. Students took photos for identification badges, double checked class schedules and learned about various student organizations.

Patrick Dove

Patrick Dove/Standard-Times Claudia Sanchez has her picture taken for her student identification badge during a registration night Monday and Lake View High School in San ANgelo. Sanchez, who will be entering the 10th grade, will be a second-year member of the Lake View High School Air Force Junior ROTC. shot/archived 8.15.11

Patrick Dove

SAN ANGELO, Texas - MEET THE TEACHERS

Schoolchildren and their parents can meet their teachers and get introduced to their classrooms at events this week.

Students can pick up schedules, or registration packets if not previously registered. If registering tonight, bring proof of residency.* Coaches' meeting in gym for seventh- and eighth-grade athletes. Bring physical forms.

While teachers and administrators throughout the Concho Valley are getting ready for the first day of school Monday, parents are quickly running out of time to finish their back-to-school shopping and prepare their children for the school year.

Some parents are waiting for the Texas Sales Tax Holiday this weekend to hit the stores, but many say it is more advantageous to get the shopping done sooner.

"I bought most basic school supplies three weeks ago," said Stacy McGuire, who has a sophomore at Lake View High School, an eighth-grader at Lincoln Middle School and a third-grader at Goliad Elementary School.

So far, she said, she's spent about $80 for all three kids but still has more to buy. She plans to buy the rest of the supplies this week, before the tax-free weekend.

"I don't usually go on tax-free weekend," she said. "The lines are so long."

School supply lists, which can be found in stores, on gosanangelo.com and on individual schools' websites, are different for every grade and every school.

Teachers decide on the supplies needed for the year, said Aaron Beck, student intervention coordinator at Lake View High School.

Some parents bargain hunt to get the best deals.

Gigi Scott said she hasn't spent much on supplies for her daughter, a fourth-grader who will be going to Paint Rock Elementary this fall.

"I have only paid a few dollars and have got two-thirds of the list," she said. "I hit the big sales at Office Max, (Office) Depot, Walgreens, CVS."

While parents finish buying school supplies for their students in elementary and middle school, parents of high school students typically have to wait for school to start to find out what their needs are.

Janelle Richardson, who has a sophomore at Central High School, is hoping to get around that delay. She saved the lists from each teacher given to her older son, who graduated from Central last year.

"A few things might change, but I've got the basics — highlighters, red pen, black pens, index cards and map colors," she said. "She'll need one or two little things, but for the most part, she's done."

Richardson, who also has a kindergartner and a third-grader at Lamar Elementary School, said she has spent almost $200 on supplies for her three daughters. She would have waited until this weekend to buy them tax-free, she said, but needed them by Friday so her younger girls can bring them to the "Meet the Teacher" event at Lamar.

"I've stuck to the list and spent about $30 per child, minus lunchboxes and backpacks," said Wanda Green, whose boys are in first and fourth grade at Santa Rita Elementary School. "I'm hoping to find a good deal on those items."

With a daughter at Fannin Elementary School and a son at TLC Academy, Josie Solano said her school supply strategy is to wait until tax-free weekend.

"I'll be waiting, because every penny counts," she said.

She is hoping to keep the cost of her kids' supplies to about $40, she said, "but it might be a little more than that."

With a senior at Lake View High School, Tia Jones said she shopped a month ago for the basics she knows her son will need. For the rest, she'll have to wait until teachers give lists.

"It's hard to have to wait until after school starts," she said. "By then, if they need something special, like a blue folder, stores are out of them."

Jones said that when she lived in Austin, each student paid a certain amount for school supplies, and they were delivered to the class.

"It was so much easier," she said, "and then every child had the same supplies."

School administrators understand that the amount of supplies needed can be too much for some parents, so there is help. Each school has a supply closet filled with basic school supplies donated by the local DESK Project and by individuals. DESK — Donating Educational Supplies to Kids — collects supplies and donations, and provides SAISD schools with a Walmart gift card to purchase additional supplies.

"When a kid needs something, if we have it, we give it to them," said Lake View's Beck. "Last year we gave out three or four boxes of filled backpacks. It's really neat to be able to give them a backpack and tell them, 'Have a nice day.' "

"Last year was the first year we thought to add jump drives" to the list, because of the DESK Project, Beck said. The computer storage devices allow students to work on a project, such as a research paper, in the library at school, then transition the project from school to home, he said.

"Teachers also buy a lot of supplies on their own," Beck said, but the DESK Project definitely helps the kids. "Sometimes we get a Walmart card; sometimes we get a big box of spiral notebooks."

Parents who need assistance buying their children's school supplies can call the school's counselor or at-risk coordinator.